Over the Rainbow, "Stormy Weather," and "One for My Baby" are just a few of Harold Arlen's well-loved compositions. Yet his name is hardly known—except to the musicians who venerate him. At a gathering of songwriters George Gershwin called him "the best of us." Irving Berlin agreed. Paul McCartney sent him a fan letter and became his publisher. Bob Dylan wrote of his fascination with Arlen's "bittersweet, lonely world." A cantor's son, Arlen believed his music was from a place outside himself, a place that also sent tragedy. When his wife became mentally ill and was institutionalized he turned to alcohol. It nearly killed him. But the beautiful songs kept coming: "Blues in the Night," "My Shining Hour," "Come Rain or Come Shine," and "The Man That Got Away." Walter Rimler drew on interviews with friends and associates of Arlen and on newly available archives to write this intimate portrait of a genius whose work is a pillar of the Great American Songbook.| Cover Title Contents Introduction Chapter 1. Buffalo, NY Chapter 2. New York, NY Chapter 3. "Get Happy" Chapter 4. The Cotton Club Chapter 5. Anya Chapter 6. "Stormy Weather" Chapter 7. On Broadway with Ira and Yip Chapter 8. "Last Night When We Were Young" Chapter 9. Marriage Chapter 10. Death of Gershwin Chapter 11. Hooray for What! Chapter 12. The Wizard of Oz Chapter 13. An Itinerant Songwriter Chapter 14. Writing with Johnny Mercer Chapter 15. "One for My Baby" Chapter 16. "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive" Chapter 17. St. Louis Woman Chapter 18. Descent into Misery Chapter 19. "She Was Sweet and Adorable and Then She Went Mad" Chapter 20. A Star Is Born Chapter 21. House of Flowers Chapter 22. In Search of Fame Chapter 23. An Opera Chapter 24. Two Debacles Chapter 25. The 1960s Chapter 26. Waiting Acknowledgments Notes Index | "Walter Rimler's biography is not only chock-full of information, but with intimate, carefully researched, and heretofore unknown details, making it one of the most entertaining and readable portraits of the wizard Arlen—one of songdom's greatest composers—that has ever been written. This book does a remarkable thing—it allows words to describe music."—Martin Charnin, Tony Award winning creator and director of Annie
"To the point, simple to grasp, and an engaging read. I was fully drawn to Arlen the man and Arlen the songwriter and by the end sad to relinquish his acquaintance."—Stephen Banfield, author of Jerome Kern
"Refreshingly down to earth. The Man That Got Away does what no other single volume has done: it combines a succinct account of Arlen's life with a nontechnical but useful description of his idiosyncratic songwriting style."—Larry Hamberlin, coauthor of Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era
|Walter Rimler is the author of George Gershwin: An Intimate Portrait and A Cole Porter Discography.